Julie Bena, Julie Curtiss, Joy Feasley
At Chapter NY
Condo New York
June  29–July 27, 2018

Adams and Ollman and Chapter NY are pleased to collaboratively present Julie Béna, Julie Curtiss, and Joy Feasley in a group exhibition as part of Condo New York, on view June 29 through July 27, 2018.

Julie Béna works in performance, sculpture, film, and installation, creating open-ended and surreal narrative works that combine influences of popular culture, literature and mythology. For Condo New York, Adams and Ollman and Chapter NY will present the first part of Béna’s film Have you seen Pantopon Rose?. In her performance, Béna brings Pantopon Rose, a fleeting character in William S. Burroughs’ 1959 novel Naked Lunch, to life in a surrealist narrative. Although the film was begun in 2015, the origins of Have you seen Pantopon Rose? as a performative project date to 2011. The narrative of Pantopon Rose accompanied Béna over the years, unfolding and blending with the artist’s own personal history. “Rose became me, and I became Rose in a way,” the artist has said. Béna is interested in these blurred truths or fictions, in the potential porosity and ambiguity of autobiography and in the isolated symbols and tropes we use to construct and demarcate identity. Accompanying the film are sculptures by the artist including a mobile which features a performative dance of suspended symbols that echo the often absurdist action and language in Béna’s film.

Julie Curtiss’s practice explores representations of female identity. She merges feminine markers of cultural refinement and natural forms, often associated with the female figure, within unsettling narrative contexts that call these associations into question. Her tightly framed compositions, meticulous brushstrokes, vibrant colors, and playfully stylized figures harken back to the iconic visual vocabulary of the Chicago Imagists, while her enigmatic scenes and symbolism reference Surrealism. In her painting, Lateral Embrace II, Curtiss portrays two anonymous female figures in profile, their faces concealed by oscillating ripples of tightly coiled hair. Together their organic silhouettes merge into a curtain-like form, inviting the viewer to peel back the billowing surface to uncover their secret identity. However, because Curtiss’s subjects appear fragmented and anonymous, the self remains cryptic and intentionally unresolved. Curtiss’s gouache, Blinders, similarly upends conventional representation by concealing the subject’s eyes from the viewer. Grotesque hands adorned with claw-like, magenta painted nails shield the subject’s vision from something unknown leaving the viewer to ponder their own involvement in the masquerade.

Joy Feasley’s paintings use the language of folk art and material culture, imagery inspired by the landscape and natural wonders, and references to the art historical canon to reconnect with, or resurrect arcane but powerful ideas. The concept of luck has factored into Feasley’s work for many years, often through the use of symbols, each one rooted in folklore, tradition or mythology. In the works on view in the exhibition, all from 2007, the artist continues the tradition of the coded still life with secret messages hidden in the twists and turns of lucky bamboo, here rendered with a visionary obsessiveness.

Béna was born in 1982 in Paris, France, and lives and works between Paris and Prague. She studied at the Villa Arson in Nice and attended the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and the Royal Academy of Brussels. In 2012-2013, she was part of Le Pavillon, the research laboratory of Palais de Tokyo. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at CAC Passerelle, Brest, France; Syntax, Lisbon; and French Institute, New York. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at ISCP, New York; CAC Brétigny, France; Delfina Foundation, London; Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City; Palais de Tokyo; ICA, London; Kunsthall Bergen, Norway; and Institut français, Berlin. Performances of Bena’s work have been held at Palais de Tokyo, Paris; ICA London; Palazzo Poggi, Bologna; ODD, Bucharest; Kadist Foundation, San Francisco; Musée de la Chasse, Paris; Centrale Fies, Dro, Italy; Performa 13, New York; and Fondation Gubenkian, Paris, among other venues.

Julie Curtiss was born in 1982 in Paris, and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received her MFA and BA from Ecole Nationale Superieur des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France and studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Curtiss’ work has been included in exhibitions at Anton Kern, New York, NY; White Cube, London, UK; Galerie Sultana, Paris, France; Regina Rex, New York, NY; Field Projects Gallery, New York, NY; and 106 Green Gallery, Brooklyn, New York. Curtiss was the recipient of the Van Lier Fellowship through the New York Foundation for the Arts in 2012 and has participated in the Saltonstall Arts Colony Residency Program, Saltonstall, NY in 2017 and the Contemporary Art Center at Woodside Residency Program, NY in 2012. In Spring 2019, Curtiss will have a solo exhibition at Anton Kern, New York.

Joy Feasley was born in 1966 and lives and works in Philadelphia, PA. She studied at Massachusetts College of Art, Cooper Union, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Recent exhibitions include the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Moore College of Art, the Temple Gallery, the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Vox Populi, all Philadelphia; Columbia College, Chicago, IL; LUMP Gallery and the Contemporary Art Museum, Raleigh, NC. Out, Out Phosphene Candle, a collaborative exhibition with Paul Swenbeck is currently on view at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, WI. She has been in residence at the Acadia Summer Arts Program, Bar Harbor, ME and at the 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica, CA. In 2011, she was awarded a Pew Fellowship in the Arts.

installation view: Julie Béna, Julie Curtiss, Joy Feasley


installation view: Julie Béna, Julie Curtiss, Joy Feasley


installation view: Julie Béna, Julie Curtiss, Joy Feasley


installation view: Julie Béna, Julie Curtiss, Joy Feasley


installation view: Julie Béna, Julie Curtiss, Joy Feasley


installation view: Julie Béna, Julie Curtiss, Joy Feasley


installation view: Julie Béna, Julie Curtiss, Joy Feasley